A Rapture of Ravens: Awakening in Taos: A Novel (The Justine Trilogy)

by Linda Lambert

  “I don’t know. Probably not much then.”

  “We’ll go to the courthouse sometime this week. The information we want must be in the records with the county’s Eighth Judicial District Court. Everything—well, almost everything—is on microfilm. We need to see the deed. And Frieda’s will. Let’s order.”

  Justine decided on the spinach salad with strawberries and pecans. “We could find these records eighty years after his death?” She knew she was less interested in the estate than in what Lawrence found for himself on Lobo Mountain, but she wanted to know everything she could find about his motivations. His life.

  “I like strawberries in my salad,” Judy Lynn said, as though reading Justine’s mind. She turned to the patient waitress and ordered. “And ice tea. Lots of lemon.” She paused long enough for Justine to order.

  Both Justine and the waitress were thankful for the reprieve. “Eighty years is a long time . . .” Justine said, drawing her lunch partner’s attention back to the subject at hand.

  “Not too long, really. You said that the will was never found? How did Frieda get everything?”

  “Long story. But to put it briefly, their mutual friend Murray—one of Frieda’s lovers—testified at the hearing that he and D. H. had written their wills at the same time. Murray brought his along and said he had read D. H.’s. He said it left everything to Frieda.”

  “Why would Lawrence be so careless? He knew how sick he was.”

  “He did and he didn’t. I think he was in denial. So many times before he had come to the edge of death, then recovered. Since he had little use for the medical profession, I suppose he didn’t believe much of what they said.”

  “Love these strawberries,” pronounced Judy Lynn, poking them with her fork. “Wherever do they get them out of season?” She savored the taste, chewing slowly.

  “Well, now. We’ll just have to find out about this estate. You know Frieda left the ranch to the university. They’ve let it go to ruin I hear.”

  “There’s something else,” Justine said, digging a small, gleaming copper key out of her purse and handing it to Judy Lynn. “Here.”

  “Connoisseurs?” the attorney asked, energetically stabbing her pecans. “Connoisseurs??”

  “I use Connoisseurs Jewelry Cleaning Gel. Surely the key didn’t look like this when you found it.”

  Justine laughed. She was beginning to enjoy this quirky woman. “I used Stain Rx,” she admitted. “What do you think?”

  “Wherever did you find it?” Judy Lynn narrowed her eyes and wrinkled her nose; her mouth twisted to the side.

  What an expression. Every feature on her face moves in concert. A real pantomime actor. “I found it under a plate of cement carved into the hearth in Lawrence’s cabin at the ranch.” No need to involve Taya. Justine managed to look sheepish.

  Judy Lynn’s face relaxed into a full grin as she gazed at Justine with amused respect. “You are adventurous, girl!” she said, turning the key over and over in her hand.

  “Looks like a safety deposit key to me,” she said. Without blinking she asked, “Do you have a dog?”

  CHAPTER 18

  “WE’LL DRIVE TO THE FOOT of the plateau,” Pablo explained, “then climb. The Hupobi Pueblo remains are up there.” He pointed to the top of a mountain, more like a mesa, evenly flattened across a mile or more of a nearly treeless, rocky terrain. The climb looked challenging, but no more than the road ahead that snaked up the side of the mountain.

  Carmen, a woman Justine met at the Taos Archeological Society, was not new to such adventures. Small and sinewy, she was an athletic and well-prepared eighty-year old. Nevertheless, even Carmen was momentarily deterred by the rushing waters of the Rio Ojo Caliente that had washed out the road. The last time Pablo was here the river was shallow enough to drive through and continue to the base of the mesa. He keenly examined their options, his forehead a washboard of puckered skin, and declared: “We’ll cross on foot.”

  “Along with fifty seventh graders?” Justine asked, slightly incredulous, staring at him.

  He grinned. “They’ll love it.”

  “If they don’t get swept away,” declared Carmen, her eyes betraying trepidation.

  Pablo studied Carmen’s anxious face for a few moments, sizing up her hesitancy. “I think I can drive the pickup backwards across the river and take you both,” he said finally. “No problem.” This husky mountain man rarely encountered problems that deterred him.

  No problem, Justine thought, recalling the endemic Arab phrase ‘mish mumpkin.’ Whenever ‘no problem’ is used, it is sure to be quite a problem. “No problem,” she repeated, and grinned at Pablo as she climbed up into the rear of the pick-up truck. She held out her hand to Carmen, who spritely scrambled up the side. “We’re ready,” Justine shouted.

  “Hold on!” shouted Pablo as he jammed the gears into reverse and began to slowly back into the river. They were no more that a few feet into the rushing water when the back of the pickup sunk into a hole, allowing the river to rise above the wheels. This truck is going nowhere, Justine realized, taking off her shoes and tying the strings together, flinging them around her neck. Carmen followed suit. They would get soaked, but fortunately the early October sun was warm—unlike the chilling river.

  As the two women slid into the rushing waters, the school bus from Santa Fe arrived with fifty wriggling, giggling seventh graders and three teachers. Pablo crawled across the passenger seat and waded out of the river to welcome the students along with a young archeological apprentice, Hannah, whose blond ponytail stuck out from under a khaki baseball cap. She had left her own car near the entry to the property and jumped onto the school bus. Justine searched the faces of the children with their heads and gangling arms hanging out the bus windows, listening to Pablo explain that they would need to forge the river on foot. Pablo was right—they’re delighted, she observed, standing in the river and holding onto the fender of the sunken truck. The rapidly moving water swirled around her thighs. She shivered.

  “We’ll form a chain,” shouted Pablo after he’d further explained the dilemma to the teachers, who looked both obliging and worried. “Take off your shoes and tie them around your neck. Hold hands! And leave your lunches and backpacks on the shore.”

  The human chain moved toward the river with the three teachers and Hannah interspersed among the students, nearer to the shorter ones—those most in danger of being washed away.

  Carmen and Justine now stood on the opposite bank. “I wonder how good their insurance policy is?” Carmen said casually. “Drowning may not be covered.”

  Justine stared at Carmen’s stoic face, then turned to watch the water parade. She plowed back into the river, standing firmly in the middle with feet anchored wide apart, providing extra support as each child in the chain passed along. One small, frightened girl with moist eyes looked up gratefully as Justine began to sing “My Favorite Things” from Sound of Music. The teachers and Hannah enthusiastically joined in, accompanied by Pablo’s baritone and Carmen’s lilting soprano. How many times had she seen the 1965 film? Twenty? Thirty? The little girl sniffed back a tear and began to sing just as a Plain-Bellied water snake crossed her forearm. When she screamed, every youngster followed suit. Screaming, wiggling, laughing. Justine picked up the snake by its tail automatically and flung it into the air. A hundred eyes watched the olive green snake with a pale yellow stomach fly through the air and land in the back of the sunken pickup. The children laughed in relief. Now they would have a snake-occupied, sinking truck to deal with when they returned. She was amused, Pablo relaxed.

  “It’s larger than Pueblo Bonito at Chaco Canyon,” Pablo called out as fifty-six hoarse explorers scrambled to the top of the four-hundred foot mesa. Coming alongside Justine, he whispered, “You know those Plain-Bellies bite and keep biting,” he said. “Just thought you should know.” He gave her his customary little boy grin.

  Justine turned white. “Poisonous?” Her voice trembled. Although she
considered herself brave in traumatic moments, she was actually terrified of snakes—of all kinds. Her mother could work in the garden with a snake wound around her neck, but not Justine.

  “Naw,” he said. “Just feisty.” A big man, light on his feet, Pablo scurried up the crest to keep pace with the children.

  As Justine topped the mesa, it nearly took her breath away. It wasn’t flat like it seemed from a distance, but the rocky soil undulated in the shape of the former civilization, the breasts of a woman rising through a wet tee shirt. A long rise here, mounds there, dry garden patches surrounded by rocks on a somewhat higher plane. It was as though history lay asleep, dozing under the earth. This terrain, the subtle rises, without the protrusions extending upward from the earth like on Easter Island, or Rome, or Egypt where great monuments reach for the sky. After all, Indians came from below, under Mother Earth’s mantle—from Blue Lake, the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon, a solitary lake in southern Colorado, all connected below the surface.

  On its northern edge, the mesa fell away into the Rio Chama valley, far below, the river weaving among thousands of golden cottonwoods. The view was framed by rolling hills nearly high enough to be called mountains, although not quite, but rather a painted landscape hanging in a Taos gallery. The students swarmed over the surface like excited lemmings.

  “You can pick up the sherds and examine them,” Pablo offered the students, “then put them back on the ground.” Justine lowered her eyes, surprised to find the surface covered with sherds of pottery, although she shouldn’t have been because she knew the earth percolates as though it is alive—churning everything to the top eventually. Such small discoveries, these sherds, like the key burning a hole in her backpack. She walked gently to avoid stepping on the treasures, bending toward the earth repeatedly to examine dozens of pieces just lying unprotected in the open. She stooped to photograph the stunning sherds; she recognized Biscuit ware—fired but not glazed--using organic paints to create black and white geometric designs, small tick marks along the edges. Most of the sherds were miniatures, about two by two inches. Justine found them familiar. Plains Indians? Sikyatki from the First Mesa? Similar to the black on white found at Chama from the Four Corners. Yet, she didn’t find the designs bold enough.

  Long roots from three scrub trees grew along the sides of a deep, circular kiva. The largest she had ever seen. Pablo shouted and waved his arms to gather everyone around the edge. The students shuffled up slowly, some sitting along the side of the great Kiva, dangling their feet into the yawning crevasse.

  “The population in Northern New Mexico expanded greatly in the late 13th century, right about the time the Four Corners peoples disappeared. How many of you have heard of Mesa Verde?”

  Nearly all hands sprang into the air. He had their undivided attention.

  “Good for you. Well, I think they moved here to Hupobi, and to other pueblos along the Rio Grande in the Tewa basin, settling themselves into the many communities,” continued Pablo.

  What did he just say? Justine asked herself, startled. Did he suggest that the Mesa Verde peoples came here? One of the greatest mysteries in archaeology solved just like this? Like Lucinda said? She stared at Pablo intensively, eager to hear more.

  “The dry farming techniques are similar, as are the black and white geometric designs on the sherds. The timing is right, the distance is doable,” Pablo continued, lowering his brim against the sun.

  “But why would the Mesa Verde people leave their homes?” asked a wiry boy who had been constantly on the move around the mesa. “I liked their cliff dwellings. My dad took my sister and me there last summer.”

  “A beautiful place,” agreed Carmen, standing nearby, fanning herself. Her clothes were nearly dry, although steam rose from the folds in her jeans. “Many archaeologists and anthropologists claim it was the climate. Records show that the climate became too hot and dry.”

  “I understand that tree-ring dating tells us that there was a 50-year drought around 1130 and another from about 1275 to 1300,” added Justine, sitting on the edge of the kiva among the children, her long legs hanging free. “Around that time, Chaco, Mesa Verde and Kayenta were all abandoned and their residents scattered. Is that right, Pablo?”

  “Right!” he said, grinning at his colleagues, his easy-going style inviting participation. “And there’s another theory I’m fond of. An intriguing mystery. My colleague Scott Ortman at the Santa Fe Institute argues that they moved precisely so they could leave their old culture behind. That could explain why we haven’t found much of their ‘baggage.”

  “Baggage?” laughed a lovely Latina girl hanging on every word.

  “Yeah, that’s what we call the art and tools and other stuff migrants bring along, leftovers from their own cultures. Scott thinks there was a sharp division among the Mesa Verde inhabitants. Most were just subsistence farmers, while the leaders lived in luxury. Rich and poor.”

  “Like Santa Fe today!” quipped another girl.

  Pablo nodded. “The more affluent were buried in luxury too. Like Egypt. So…just maybe they moved to form a more equitable form of society, such as the Tewa. They formed new forms of living together after they moved.” He was a little breathless, becoming more animated as he shared his theories.

  A bit of a stretch, thought Justine. Although Lucinda had called them gentle and adaptive. She wanted to think that humans had a natural inclination toward equality. Yet the Taos peoples aren’t equitable—certainly not toward the women. “Without baggage,” she asked, “what evidence does Scott use to say these were Four Corners people?”

  “Well now, that’s the interesting part! One of the sources of data Scott used was the structure of the faces of the new immigrants into Tesuque and Ojo Caliente areas—like here—are very similar to the faces of Mesa Verde peoples,” said Pablo. “Technology is giving us more information than we’ve had in the past.”

  “Wow! Where did he get the human skeletons?” said one of the taller girls with a big hat shadowing all but her chin. Justine noted how much taller girls were than boys at this age. Her mind wandered back into the classrooms in the Community Schools for Girls in Egypt. So like these girls, she thought. There are some things that are universal, that can’t be hidden under culture. She felt a pang of regret, regret that she hadn’t been able to watch the Egyptian girls grow up before she was expelled.

  “Not skeletons, but special photos. Tribal elders oppose the use of human remains and most excavations, which led to the Native American Graves Protection Act more than twenty years ago.” Pablo answered.

  “What about DNA? Couldn’t they use DNA?” insisted the wiry boy, shifting from foot to foot. Impatient to understand the world, so smart.

  Justine nodded encouragement toward the boy.

  One of the teachers replied, “Indians have been reluctant to allow DNA testing as well. They’ve been stung a few times when the information was misused. But that will come, especially as more Native Americans become archaeologists and join in the hunt.”

  Pablo nodded. “That’s about right. Archaeology is still a young science. We have a lot of growing to do. How many of you would like to become archaeologists?”

  Several students waved their hands vigorously. Carmen, now settled on the ground next to Justine, whispered, “It’s not as glamorous as people think. A lot of grueling, hard work.”

  “So true,” Justine whispered back. Then turning to Pablo, “Why hasn’t this great kiva been explored? There are amazing stories to tell here. At Chaco, when they began to dig, they found stone walls and a floor, and another kiva below that. Maybe that’s true here.”

  “Resources. Very limited these days. Archaeology is a slow business. Not always satisfying to funders who want quick results.”

  “So what happened to these people?” asked one of the older teachers, tilting her hat toward the sun and dabbing her face with a lace handkerchief. “Why did they want to leave?”

  “We think it was disease,” sai
d their guide.

  “But that was before the Spanish—the carriers of all the great scourges,” responded the teacher. “I thought it was the Spanish who brought the devastating diseases.”

  “Generally true,” said Carmen, noting the lace with a curious stare. “But a large number of graves have been found here together, seemingly dug around the same time.”

  “Or they were murdered about the same time,” the wiry boy added cryptically.

  Pablo chuckled, thoroughly enjoying the boy’s enthusiasm. “Well, anything is possible, young man . . . let’s get moving. First the dry farming area, then the petroglyphs. And, lunch.” The whole group moved en masse toward the higher mesa.

  An hour later, the troop scampered down the path and made their way back to the river. By now, the rushing water nearly topped the pickup’s fenders. Pablo held out his hand about five feet off the ground. “Okay kids, if you’re as tall as my hand, step over here.” The children rushed to measure themselves, to meet Pablo’s test, even without knowing the purpose. When he had a cluster of around twenty, he announced, “We are forming a brigade, teams of five, to push the truck out of the river. Are you game?” The chosen ones nodded vigorously, the short students registered disappointment. “But watch out for Justine’s snake!”

  Justine shuddered, amused that it was now her snake. She walked into the river and headed for the pickup. “Wait till I get the snake out,” she announced. Of all the terrifying adventures she’d had in the last four years: burial by an earthquake, kidnapping, death threats, digging her way out of a tomb—this was at the top of her list. Her mother told her that fears were there to be conquered. Well, Justine, let’s give it a try.

  CHAPTER 19

  “AMIR?!” JUSTINE’S VOICE nearly sang into the phone. “Where are you?”

  “I’m still in Egypt, Habibti. How are you doing?” His deep voice was remarkably clear, as though he were in the next room.